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The Unpersuadables

Product Description

While excavating fossils in the tropics of Australia with a celebrity creationist, Will Storr asked himself a simple question. Why don’t facts work? Why, that is, did the obviously intelligent man beside him sincerely believe in a six-thousand-year-old earth, in spite of all the contrary evidence?

With a unique mix of highly personal memoir, investigative journalism, and neuroscience The Unpersuadables reveals how the stories we tell ourselves about the world invisibly shape our beliefs.

Praise for The Unpersuadables:

"The subtle brilliance of The Unpersuadables is Mr. Storr's style of letting his subjects hang themselves with their own words." —Michael Shermer, The Wall Street Journal

"A tour de force . . . A searching, extraordinarily thoughtful exploration of what it means to believe anything . . . There are entire novels that do less than Storr achieves here in a mere 30 pages . . . Running through all these stories is Storr’s growing uncertainty about certainty." —Laura Miller, Salon

"Drawing upon his well-documented store of inquisitiveness about superstition, eccentricity, and idiosyncratic beliefs, Storr has delivered an accessible look at the brain’s capacity for adopting unconventional ideas . . . Storr’s distillation of current thinking on the subject is a nice primer for the non-expert reader." —The Daily Beast

"Throws new and salutary light on all our conceits and beliefs. Very valuable, and a great read to boot, this is investigative journalism of the highest order." —Independent, Book of the Week

"Storr can open chapters like a stage conjurer, and his prose has an easy, laconic style embracing Jon Ronson’s taste for the fabulously weird and Louis Theroux’s ability to put his subjects at ease. He is a funny and companionable guide . . . [who] confounds expectations." —Guardian

Will Storr is a contributing editor at Esquire. He is the author of Will Storr vs. The Supernatural and The Hunger and the Howling of Killan Lone.